


Practicality

by Mhalachai



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Crossover, Fixed Points, Gen, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-26
Updated: 2013-01-26
Packaged: 2017-11-27 01:44:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/656640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mhalachai/pseuds/Mhalachai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ten years ago, a portal threw Dawn into a new world. Now, she finds herself having to be the practical one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Practicality

**Author's Note:**

> Written in December, 2005. Going through my back-catalog...

_Buffy._

_By the time you read this, I will likely be dead._

Dawn paused, staring at the words. The familiar tinge of sadness was pushed down by a sense of amusement. Drama much? She pushed aside the piece of paper, and began again. 

_Buffy,_

_When you read this, I will likely have already fallen through a portal that we were trying to close over the Cleveland hellmouth. So far, Willow hasn't been able to find me. I choose to believe that is because she did not know where to look, not that she was injured. I know you will be looking. I know you, even if it has been over ten years for me._

_I love you, Buffy._

The pen hesitated over the sentence. It was rather melodramatic, but Dawn meant it. Over the last ten years, she had come to realize a lot of things about herself. So many things in her life had been turned upside down, truths she had known turned inside out, but one thing always remained. Buffy was Dawn's family, and Dawn would always love Buffy. 

_The portal didn't throw me to another dimension, although I spent about a year trying to prove to myself that it did. It threw me_ back _in time, as stupid as that sounds. I suppose Andrew was right about time travel after all._

_I landed in London, with only the clothes on my back, your leather jacket, and Kennedy's axe. I might have been able to climb back up to the portal, before it winked out, but I heard someone yelling for help. I made a choice that night. Some days, I'm sorry that I did, and other days, I can't imagine doing it any other way._

Outside Dawn's window came the sound of raised voices, and the shrill trill of the police whistle. Dawn put down her pen and stood, stretching the kinks out of her spine as best she could in her corset as she walked to the window. The altercation between cabbies wasn't enough to distract her for long, and soon she was back in her chair. She had put off writing this letter for for too long. Every preparation was complete. All she needed to do was write the letter, and she would be done.

_A pair of vampires were attacking a man, in the alley off the street. I don't know what the vampires were expecting, but you know how sharp Kennedy keeps her weapons. Luckily, the man had been knocked down and didn't see me decapitating two of London's vermin. I explained that they'd run off as I helped him up. By then, the portal was gone._

_The man I saved was a doctor. He was surprised to see me in trousers, and I was surprised to find myself in Victorian England. Sometimes I wonder about the coincidences of fate. John took me to a friend of his, who didn't throw me out when I started ranting about how I was stuck here. After a great deal of explaining, and a little showing, he believed me. It also didn't hurt that he'd run into vampires before._

Dawn turned up her lamp, smiling at the recollection of how John had reacted when his friend explained, in that dry sardonic voice, all about vampires and demons, just as if he were talking about the proper method for making tea.

_The friend, who was a detective of sorts, has a brother who got me a job. I can't really explain what I do. Even I don't really know all of what I do, but it's save-the-world stuff._

_And I'm not coming back._

_You know how we thought the Watchers' Council was a bunch of idiots? We were so totally right. There's a department in the British government that deals with the supernatural, and the Watchers refuse to work with them. You can guess whose side I'm on. I have work to do here, books to translate and demons to stop. But that's not all I've been doing._

Dawn touched the ornate key that lay on the desk. She'd had a coven of witches in Scotland charm it, so that only Dawn's blood, or a close relative such as Buffy, would be able to use it to open the key's vault. It was a similar spell to what the coven had laid on King Arthur's sword in the stone, centuries before, but that little story was not Dawn's secret to tell. 

_I've put the address of the bank, and the key, in the envelope with this letter. When I left you, we still had no money and very little material from the Council. I can't do anything about that, but I can help you with this. It's money, to help you get the Slayers up and running and properly armed. There's as much research material as I could find in the British Museum vaults. More importantly, there's a list of contacts that I hope Willow can use. Most of them will probably still be alive. They're demons, but for the most part, they're on the no-apocalypse side of the game._

_It's not a lot, but it's as much as I can do. I can't come back, but I wanted to help you out as much as I could._

Would Buffy believe her? Would she even care? Dawn could imagine Buffy, reading the letter, screaming for Willow, demanding that the witch find Dawn, bring her back. It wouldn't work, not without an important component. 

The only way to get Dawn back to Buffy's time was Dawn's blood and Willow's power. 

Dawn knew she wasn't going back. 

_Maybe you're wondering if I've changed history by being here. I know I sure thought about it, at first. But I'm not changing history, Buffy, I'm a part of it. Last month, while I was out on a walk, I saved a child from running into the road and being trampled by a horse. The child's important, in a way. Not him, but he does something that made our world like it was. If I hadn't been there, would he have lived? Would he even have been there? I can't know, but I'm not sorry I was there to save him._

Dawn knew that she needed to end the letter, but she didn't want to say goodbye to Buffy It would seem ... like it was finally over. After ten years of not admitting that it was over, what was one more minute, in the grand scheme of things?

_If I die, I have left instructions in my will to have another letter delivered to you a day after this letter. I know it might seem like a long time to wait, but I can't risk the letters crossing. There's a reason, but I can't explain that right now._

_I love you, Buffy, and Willow and Xander and Giles and everyone. I'm only able to do what I can, help the way I am, because of everything you taught me, and the person you helped me become._

_Dawn Summers,_  
London, England  
28 September, 1896 

Placing the pen aside, Dawn watched as the ink dried on the page, sealing her decision into permanence. 

The air moved slightly. Dawn knew without looking who had come into the room. How a man as large as Mycroft Holmes could move so silently was always a curiously to Dawn. She'd wondered idly if he was part-cat; that might explain some of the tendencies of his brother, Sherlock. 

"It is done?" 

"It's done." Dawn slipped the letter into the envelope, along with the key. "They'll get this to her on the right day?"

"As long as everything works out, then yes."

"And if not, I guess I'll have to live long enough to deliver it to her in person," Dawn finished. "I suppose living to one-hundred and fifty isn't so bad."

Mycroft stepped forward and took the envelope from Dawn's hands. "You look doubtful."

Raising an eyebrow at the man in charge of her particular government department, Dawn said dryly, "I think I lost my right to be doubtful last month."

"Ah, yes, when you plucked your great-grandfather from certain death at the feet of a horse," Mycroft said. 

"Yes." Dawn swallowed, looking out into the gathering gloom of London. "Makes me wonder what else I can stop, and what I can't."

"We have your information, on future events," Mycroft told her. "We will do what we can."

Dawn stood, absently brushing her long skirt into place. "I will see you when I get back from Egypt, Mr. Holmes."

"Indeed, Miss Summers."

When Mycroft's large form cleared the door, Dawn paused for a moment, then briskly set about packing her carrying case with the last-minute items she needed from her office. The movement didn't stop her wondering. Would Buffy understand why Dawn hadn't sent that letter to be delivered before Mom died? Before Tara died? Before everything with Glory happened? Probably not. There were probably a million things about the future Dawn could change, but there were something things that needed to happen. 

It was just the practical way. And in the last ten years, Dawn had become very practical. 

Enough introspection. Dawn picked up her satchel and walked out of her office. Her ferry across the Enough Channel left early in the morning, and there was much to do in the meantime. 

Soon, if all went according to plan, she'd have her hands on an Urn of Osiris, to place in the hands of a magics dealer who would keep it safe, waiting for Anya's request, when her friends set about raising Buffy from the dead in the early days of the twenty-first century.. 

That was the other reason Dawn couldn't go back. In order to save the world, Dawn had made choices that Buffy wouldn't understand, and could never forgive.

_\-- fin_  



End file.
